How big the market is
For 2025, 652 furniture manufacturers filed financial statements, with 5,644 employees and sales revenue of 4.2 billion lei. By number of companies, furniture is the second-largest manufacturing division, after food. Woodworking has 379 companies, 1,435 employees and 1 billion lei in sales. Of the field’s 1,031 companies, 894 have fewer than ten employees.
The average gross wage in the fourth quarter of 2025 was 12,300 lei in furniture manufacturing and 10,603 lei in woodworking. The manufacturing average for the same quarter was 14,025 lei, and the economy-wide average 16,355 lei.
What permits apply
The list of permits includes no licence for furniture, joinery, sawn timber or wooden packaging. No sanitary operating authorisation is required either: the list of activities that need one contains no class from divisions 16 or 31. Of the field’s products, only cork articles are on the list of non-food products that need a sanitary approval before they go on the market.
That leaves three rules that depend on what you do. Timber may only be received and processed with proof of its legal origin, and that applies to everyone. Pallets and crates marked for export need an authorisation from the National Food Safety Agency (ANSA). The integrated environmental permit is needed only above the capacity thresholds for boards, wood preservation and lacquering.
Timber with proof of origin
The Forest Code bans receiving, storing, processing, selling or loading wood products onto any means of transport without proof of their legal origin. For a workshop, this means the documents are needed for every timber delivery it receives, not only when trees are felled. For sawmills, the code has a separate rule: roundwood may not be stored or sawn into timber or other semi-finished goods without these documents. The Environmental Protection Inspectorate seizes timber without documents, and if its legal origin cannot be established, the timber is confiscated.
The page on agriculture, viticulture and forestry explains how timber is felled and sold, how it travels with its documents and how it is tracked up to first processing.
What cannot be exported
Government Decision No. 664/2016 suspends the export of timber under five tariff headings. They cover firewood, chips, sawdust, pellets and briquettes; raw wood, even if barked or roughly squared; hoopwood and split poles; railway sleepers; and sawn timber thicker than 6 mm, even if planed or sanded. Since March 2022, the list has also included firewood, pellets, and coniferous and tropical sawn timber.
The suspension does not cover products processed further. Veneer and sawn wood up to 6 mm thick, profiled wood such as cladding boards and parquet strips, wood-based panels and plywood, pallets and crates, builders’ joinery and furniture can be exported without this restriction.
Pallets and crates for export: ISPM 15 marking
Pallets and crates used in international trade are treated and marked under the ISPM 15 standard. Moldova requires it for imports: wood packaging entering the country must be treated and marked, with the exceptions the standard allows.
On packaging made in Moldova, the mark may only be applied by an operator entered in the register of professional operators and authorised by the plant protection authority. The authorisation is granted to a plant competent in the treatments and has its own treatment facility, or to one that uses only wood treated and marked by an authorised operator and can show where it came from. Repairing marked pallets needs the same authorisation, and an authorised operator is inspected at least once a year.
Lacquering, impregnation and boards
The industrial emissions law puts three operations from this field on its list of activities with a significant environmental risk. The first is producing OSB, particleboard or fibreboard at more than 600 m³ a day. The second is preserving wood with chemicals at more than 75 m³ a day, other than treatment solely against mould. The third is surface treatment with organic solvents, meaning lacquering, painting or impregnating, with a consumption above 150 kg an hour or 200 tonnes a year. Above these thresholds, a plant may operate only with an integrated environmental permit, which costs 30,000 lei and is issued for 12 years. The list of low-risk activities contains no class from divisions 16 or 31.
Below the permit threshold, the same law has rules for installations that use solvents. Installations that coat wooden surfaces using more than 15 tonnes of solvents a year, impregnate wood using more than 25 tonnes or laminate wood and plastic using more than 5 tonnes must meet the law’s emission limit values. The operator reports to the Environment Agency every year with data showing that it meets them.
For a factory or a workshop, the usual form is an SRL, which pays 12% income tax and whose liability is limited to the company’s own assets. Furniture, joinery, boards and packaging can be exported, so a company that wants to sell abroad picks, from the outset, products the export rules allow.
We handle the choice of CAEM codes, the articles of association, the filing with the Public Services Agency and the opening of the bank account. We prepare the application for the wood packaging marking authorisation and the export paperwork, and for a foreign company we register a Moldovan company or a free economic zone resident. We can take over the accounting, including records of the timber received and its proof of origin, from the first month. What each service includes is on the corporate services page.
